U.N. peacekeepers under threat in Ivory Coast

by Marco Chown Oved - Jan. 3, 2011 12:00 AMAssociated Press

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - Some people yell "U.N. out!" as the Jordanian U.N. peacekeepers pass by in their armored personnel carriers, but these soldiers don't understand French. One man honks his horn before dragging his thumb across his throat in a gesture that cannot be misunderstood.

The United Nations declared Alassane Ouattara the winner of Ivory Coast's long-delayed presidential vote, but incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo has refused to step aside now for more than a month. Gbagbo accuses the U.N. of failing to remain neutral, and the U.N. has ignored his demand for thousands of peacekeepers to leave.

Now peacekeepers patrolling the streets of Abidjan are coming under growing threat - one was wounded with a machete this week when a crowd in a pro-Gbagbo neighborhood attacked a convoy and set a U.N. vehicle on fire. The next day, a U.N. patrol was fired upon from a nearby building as an angry crowd surrounded them. They were forced to fire into the air to disperse the crowd, a U.N. statement said.

Gbagbo accused those peacekeepers of firing on the crowd and reiterated his call for the U.N. mission to leave during a Saturday evening address on state television. The U.N. denies having fired on the crowd.

"Any attack against peacekeepers constitutes a crime under international law, for which the perpetrators and those who instigate them will be held accountable," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned, a U.N. spokesman said.

"Ivory Coast is at war," Ouattara's prime minister, Guillaume Soro, said Saturday, before calling on the international community to intervene with "legitimate force."

West African leaders from the Economic Community of West African States are due to arrive today in Abidjan to negotiate Gbagbo's departure.

ECOWAS threatened to use military force to remove Gbagbo if he doesn't leave freely, but failed to persuade him to go into exile when its first delegation came to Ivory Coast on Monday.

The U.N. was invited to certify the election results in Ivory Coast as part of a peace agreement signed by all parties after the 2002-03 civil war divided the country in two.

The U.N. endorsed the findings of the country's electoral commission, but the constitutional council subsequently declared Gbagbo president after throwing out more than half a million votes from Ouattara strongholds.

The council cited violence and intimidation toward Gbagbo supporters that invalidated the results. The top U.N. envoy in Ivory Coast has disputed that assessment.

But while Ouattara has been internationally recognized as the winner of the presidency, Ivory Coast itself remains divided between supporters of each candidate along lines that are religious, ethnic and geographic.

Ouattara, a Muslim from the north, is supported by the rebels who took up arms in 2002 to fight for equal rights. Gbagbo, a Christian from the south, is supported by the army and the state bureaucracy in the south.

"We are on the brink of genocide," said Ivory Coast's U.N. ambassador, Youssoufou Bamba.